Google Trends Features ASCII Art Of 9/11

jordan8037310, January 6th, 2009 at 1:04 pm ET:

It looks more like a plane hitting the twin towers than it does a plane landing on a runway. I just wanted to point it out for the purposes of it seeming more like a violent prank like the Swastika was back in July.

---

Barry Schwartz, January 6th, 2009 at 1:23 pm ET:
Premium member since 01/2009

Hmm, Jordan – you make a good point. Didn’t even think of it from that angle.

---

chiropractic, January 6th, 2009 at 1:35 pm ET:
Premium member since 01/2009

My first instinct was that it was 2 towers as well. Saw some asci art in results recently but not so high up. The related searches Related “trends, google trends, 911″ may be a clue.

---

dmzachara, January 6th, 2009 at 1:55 pm ET:

I find it very interesting that “fbi jobs” shows up at #3, right below the ASCII image. I wonder if this is just a coincidence….?

---

adammm, January 6th, 2009 at 2:27 pm ET:

FBI will be hiring around 3,000 new employees, carried on most news sites last night/this morning. No coincidence. I originally thought it was searchers using the airline flight google search function.

---

Cohn, January 6th, 2009 at 2:28 pm ET:

I don’t know how the plane got in there but based on the related searches showing up further down the list I would guess their servers got hacked:

anosmia Related searches:
404, mus musculus, musculus, error 500, ferrari f 2009

---

loongtim, January 6th, 2009 at 3:10 pm ET:

I remember this hoax email going around after 9/11. It claimed that if you typed out the flight number of the plane that crashed into the towers (Q33 NY) with Webdings font, it would display this image.

It will – except that the real flight # wasn’t Q33. Just a hoax. And this is just a violent prank as jordan8037310 already said above.

---

edbloom, January 6th, 2009 at 3:15 pm ET:

looks like it’s still there – can’t believe they haven’t removed it yet – looks like the hackers are having a very good week with the whole twitter thing and now this – unreal

---

Danny Sullivan, January 6th, 2009 at 5:00 pm ET:
Premium member since 12/2008

Apparently this forum post might be the source of the queries:
http://forum.ebaumsworld.com/showthread.php?p=5328424#post5328424

---

Cohn, January 6th, 2009 at 5:32 pm ET:

Google Search:
✈ ▌▌
to produce the image.
Don’t know how you grabbed the page.

---

Cohn, January 6th, 2009 at 5:34 pm ET:

oops it converted it… delete space before ampersands
✈ ▌ ▌

---

Cohn, January 6th, 2009 at 5:37 pm ET:

ok last time and them I am giving up… delete space between all numbers and letters to produce image

& # 9 9 9 2; & # 9 6 1 2; & # 9 6 1 2;

---

aloxe, January 7th, 2009 at 4:40 am ET:

I am not sure we can call that ASCII art or even an ascii image.

---

aclark, January 7th, 2009 at 7:55 am ET:

Looks like a prank gone “big time” to me but its hardly art is it.

---

dmacd, January 7th, 2009 at 9:53 pm ET:

Google Trends was spoofed again today with ASCII art that used a racially-charged epithet in to suggest that black people patronize a certain fried-chicken franchise.

Screenshot at http://www.amethystweb.com/trends2.jpg

---